Rare Decay Threatens to Tear down Main Theory Physics

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland has detected a rare decay of a particle that could undermine the theory of super-symmetry, one of the main theories in physics.

Super-symmetry, or SUSY is a theory used to explain a number of inconsistencies in the theory of the Standard Model, the traditional theory of subatomic physics the most widely recognized by scientists in the world.

The results of recent observations reported in the Hadron Collider Physics conference in Kyoto, Japan, held since 12 November, shows the difference with most SUSY models are believed to physicists.

Professor Chris Parkes, one of the conference participants who came from England to the BBC explained that “Super-symmetry may not be dead, but the latest results have obviously been put in the hospital.”

SUSY theories claiming the existence of super-particles or larger versions of the particles that have previously been found in nature or that have been known to man.

The presence of these particles could explain why galaxies rotate faster than those described in the Standard Model theory. Physicists suspect other than the particles already known, galaxies also contain dark material compiled by the super particles. Therefore galaxy contains more mass can be detected and spin faster.

Are researchers at the LHCb detector that finds a flaw in that theory. Previously estimated that a particle called the Bs Meson if decay it will split into two particles known as muons. But the test was found of any decay million times, just three times a Bs Meson particles shed into two muons. If the super-particles really exist – as postulated in the theory of SUSY – then decay should occur more often.

Decay test itself is one of the “golden test” or a major test in proving the theory of super-symmetry.

Professor Val Gibson of Cambridge LHCb team said the test was to put the “theory of super-symmetry we are in doubt.”

If SUSY is not an exact explanation for dark matter, scientists must look for alternative ideas to explain inconsistencies that occur in the Standard Model. But so far, physicists are trying to find an alternative explanation – the so-called “new physics” – for anomalies in the Standard Model is still a stalemate.

“If there is new physics, so he hides so well behind the Standard Model,” explained Dr. Marc-Olivier Bettler of Cambridge, one of the team’s analysis of the test.

Meanwhile, according to Parkes, the test results did not deny the existence of super-partikel. It’s just now that they’re “running out of location to find.”